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PROS

CONS

VERDICT

Portaball is a nonsense free puzzler that takes advantage of the Portal concept in a 2D arena to bend your mind to its tricky ways.

Full Review

App Store Info

There's no doubt that I've probably missed other attempts at re-conceptualizing Valve's seminal FPS puzzler Portal in to a top down puzzler, but Portaball by Bartosz Ciechanowski is one of the first I've come across and as mind-benders go it doesn't hold back on the challenge.

You'll be slowly introduced to new objects over 50 currently available levels that will change the behavior of a frictionless ball as it bounces around the puzzle environment. Certain specific walls can have one of two different portals opened on them and you'll need to manipulate them in order to navigate around the level to make it to the exit. Barriers, switches, 'phasing', speed pads and holes all combine to confuse and distract players from the often elegant solution required to complete the level.

The visuals keep the Portal-esque theme rolling with its clean mono-tone style, however the designs are clear and easy to read, making even complicated puzzles easy to follow once in motion. Portals can be shifted while the game is paused and the developer encourages players to use this feature to solve time sensitive puzzles. However a bug currently affects when players can pause as holes will continue to open up and cause your ball to fall even when time is stopped.

Challenge modes attempt to extend the life of Portaball, though once completed only leaderboard junkies will really keep plugging away and it would be good to know if more content is planned. Still, if you enjoy a stiff challenge and don't mind the occasional puzzle stumping you then Portaball's elegant gameplay is well worth checking out.

Description

What is Portaball? It's unique, portals based puzzle game. In Portaball your goal is to guide ball throughout a level. The thing is, you can only do that by spawning portals, they allow ball to get teleported. Ball enters one portal, reappears at the other one. That's it.

Portaball is designed the stretch the limits of your creativity. You will often find yourself astonished:

'When you win a round, you feel absolutely awesome.' - appolicious.com
'Portaball's elegant gameplay is well worth checking out.' - appspy.com
'There is some serious fun to be had with Portaball. - 148apps.com

Game features:

80 AMAZING LEVELS
Find out if you can get through traps, buttons, sliders, acceleration fields and more! Every single level designed to bend the boundaries of your imagination.

23 ACHIEVEMENTS
Try to max out Portaball and show everyone who is the mastermind.

EXCITING CHALLENGES
Finish Portaball with least number of portals you can get, or try to complete game with only one pause per level.

GAME CENTER INTEGRATION
Compete with players worldwide on leaderboard by getting best score in 'least portals' challenge and impress your friends with achievements.

RETINA DISPLAY SUPPORT
Carefully crafted graphics to make use of every single pixel of this superb display.

Screenshots

Screenshot 1 of 5

Comments

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FalloutNewVegas6 years, 10 months ago

So wait you mean this game is like portal by Valve...Hmm portal was definately unique and this looks like a pretty unique puzzler following the same style but I'm going to wait a while before I get this...

andrew6 years, 10 months ago

Similar in the sense that you need to control two portals while manipulating physics to get to your goal ;)